Kant, God, and metaphysics : the secret thorn / Edward Kanterian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kanterian, Edward, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804.

Kant, Immanuel.

Religion.

Physical Description:

xvii, 444 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.

Contents:

1 From Luther to Hume: the weakness motif in the tradition p. 1

1.1 The first circle: the certainty of salvation p. 2

Erasmus p. 3

Luther p. 5

The problem of evidence p. 11

Further developments p. 14

1.2 The second circle: the rise of Protestant orthodoxy p. 16

Securing faith p. 17

The return of Aristotle p. 19

Further developments p. 24

1.3 The third circle: the new science and its philosophy p. 25

From Copernicus to Montaigne p. 26

Descartes p. 30

The reaction to Descartes p. 33

Spinoza p. 36

Further developments p. 38

Pascal and Bayle p. 40

1.4 The fourth circle: triumph and peril of reason p. 42

Newton p. 43

Leibniz p. 47

Pietism and Thomasius p. 53

Wolff p. 56

Boyle and Locke p. 62

English deism, Hume and French atheism p. 67

2 The early works p. 89

2.2 The beginning: Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces p. 90

2.3 God's glory: the Universal Natural History p. 95

The character of the work p. 96

Cosmology and cosmogony: Kant's celestial mechanics p. 99

Physico-theology: God and His creation p. 102

The abyss and the sinking p. 107

Religion and science: some predecessors p. 109

The central motifs p. 113

Anxiety, fallenness, faith and revelation p. 114

The chain of creation: glory and vanity p. 118

The human fate p. 121

The holy in Kant p. 127

2.4 From physico-theology to onto-theology: the New Elucidation p. 128

The principle of sufficient ground p. 130

The theological argument p. 132

Sin and free will p. 134

More on the principle of determining ground p. 137

Causation and God p. 141

2.5 The modal argument in the New Elucidation p. 145

Kant's Modal Principle and the modal argument p. 148

Baumgarten's metaphysics of possibility p. 153

Fragment R3733 p. 156

3 Intermission: the period 1756-1762 p. 170

3.1 The Physical Monadology, the New Theory of Motion and Rest, and the False Subtlety essay p. 170

3.2 The question of optimism p. 174

The Optimism essay p. 174

The Funk essay p. 177

Two optimism models: Pope and Spalding p. 181

Crusius's optimism p. 183

Fragments R3704 and R3705 p. 185

4 The first fortress: The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of the Existence of God p. 190

4.1 Preliminary: the frailty of theory p. 190

4.2 Existence p. 193

Existence is not a predicate, but absolute position p. 193

Existence goes beyond possibility p. 195

Discussion of Kant's thesis about existence p. 197

An objection p. 200

Discussion continued p. 202

4.3 Possibility p. 207

The modal argument p. 207

A first probing p. 208

A digression: actualism p. 212

The impossibility of no possibility p. 214

Formalising Kant's argument p. 216

Another formal attempt p. 220

The Modal Principle again p. 223

The necessary being p. 227

The uniqueness of the necessary being p. 228

Simplicity and uniqueness p. 230

Immutability and eternity p. 232

The highest being p. 233

The theistic property: personhood p. 237

Perfection p. 238

The status of the modal argument p. 240

4.4 Physico-theology, naive and improved p. 241

Life and the supernatural p. 243

Miracles p. 245

Naive physico-theology p. 248

The question of certainty p. 250

Three objections to naive physico-theology p. 253

Improved physico-theology p. 255

All-sufficiency p. 259

4.5 Conclusion: the status of onto-theology p. 263

5 First cracks in the wall p. 285

5.2 The Prize essay p. 285

Mathematics versus philosophy p. 286

Certainty in philosophy and the Newtonian model p. 289

Certainty in metaphysics p. 292

Certainty in theology p. 294

5.3 Negative Magnitudes p. 297

6 The 'sceptical' period p. 311

6.1 The Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime p. 312

6.2 The remarks on the Observations and Rousseau's influence p. 315

6.3 Turning against metaphysics: the mid-1760s p. 323

Two notions of metaphysics p. 324

Dreams of a Spirit-Seer p. 325

The concept of a spirit p. 327

The immaterial realm p. 329

Morality p. 330

Towards a logic of philosophical illusion p. 333

A theoretical conclusion p. 335

Moral faith and the limits of knowledge p. 337

7 Religious roots and sources of the critical turn p. 345

7.1 God and metaphysics in the Reflexionen of 1760-1768 p. 345

Phase ζ (approx. 1764-1766) p. 345

Phase η (1764-1768) p. 348

Phase ι (approx. 1766-1768) p. 349

7.2 The antinomial structure of reason: theological roots and models p. 351

7.3 Kant's theological teachers: Knutzen and Schultz p. 358

7.4 The Humean model p. 361

7.5 New building blocks: the Reflexionen in 1769 p. 364

The antinomies and the weakness motif p. 364

Further reflections on reason's weakness p. 372

The void p. 374

The world p. 376

God p. 379.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138908581

1138908584

OCLC:

975372301